The invention relates to the field of messaging systems. In particular, the invention relates to a method and apparatus for converting a text based email message to an image-based email message.
Email messages are rendered and displayed using fonts pre-installed on an operating system. This creates many limitations ranging from users not being able to personalize emails to web designers being limited in the font typefaces that they are able to use when designing web pages. To explain further, when creating an email message a user may be unable to personalize the email message to any great extent because the user is limited to the fonts pre-installed on his or her computer. Often, the fonts are preinstalled when the operating system is installed on a computer system. As different versions of an operating system are launched onto the market and users upgrade or replace their operating systems, more or fewer fonts may be installed on their computer system—thus creating disparate sets of fonts preinstalled on different users computer systems.
As different users often have different versions of an operating system installed on their computer systems, this creates an environment in which one user may have only small set of preinstalled fonts that are common with another user's preinstalled set of fonts. Thus a problem arises when a user creates an email message with a font typeface that is not installed on the recipient's computer system. When the recipient receives the email message, the recipient's mail client detects that the recipient's mail client does not have the message font preinstalled and renders the email message by substituting an existing font for the font used in the message. Thus, the recipient is unable to benefit from any personalization of the email message by the sender. One solution to this problem is proposed in an article called Web personalization: “Method of combining a personal font with internet messages”, IBM TDB, Aug. 12, 2002. The article describes a way in which an embedded font can be specified in HTML using a STYLE sheet element. This allows a font to be specified using a URL where the font is located on a remote server. However, relying on a font that resides on a server has several disadvantages. Firstly, the server may not always be available. Secondly, the font may no longer exist on the server when the recipient tries to read the message and therefore can not be served. Thirdly, a server-based font is not available for use when a user is working off-line.
Another solution is proposed in an article by Stopdesign, published on 7 Mar. 2003. The article proposes using background images for creating headlines and decorative typefaces. However, the solution has a number of drawbacks in that the image file has to be pre-generated and the pre-generated image can often only be used for the scenario in which it was generated for.